


We Look After Each Other

by pencilguin



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28963656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pencilguin/pseuds/pencilguin
Summary: Starting out on the Discovery, Cadet Tilly is struggling during her first week on the new job and under her new boss.
Relationships: Hugh Culber & Sylvia Tilly, Hugh Culber/Paul Stamets, Paul Stamets & Sylvia Tilly
Comments: 13
Kudos: 58





	We Look After Each Other

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cygfa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cygfa/gifts).



> For my dear friend, the wonderful Cygfa. <3 
> 
> Sorry that this is not beta read. 
> 
> Content warnings: depiction of a panic/anxiety attack

Tilly has been an avid fan of Dr. Paul Stamets for years. A long-time mycology enthusiast, it was pretty much impossible to read anything about astromycology without coming across his name — usually along with that of Dr. Justin Straal, of course, but while the latter has also been largely involved in a selection of terraforming projects, Stamets appears to have dedicated his entire life to fungi. So picture her excitement when Starfleet informs her that the scientist she has been writing fan letters to for the past two years or so has personally requested for her to be assigned to his research team on a brand new, top secret starship that is rumored to be constructed after his very own specifications.

After finally meeting her idol in person and spending her first couple of days working under him, Tilly can confirm that he is just as brilliant, passionate and formidable as she imagined.

She is also absolutely terrified of him.

In a way he’s refreshing — Stamets cares very little about rank or Starfleet protocol, but he doesn’t tolerate bullshit, ignorance, or any waste of his time. He also very definitely doesn’t sugarcoat his words, bother with niceties or seem to consider compliments and open appreciation worth anybody’s time. On more than a few occasions, she has to admit to having found him outright rude — particularly, it seems, to anyone of equal or higher rank than him, and any medical personnel. Especially whenever he has to respond to Captain Lorca, Tilly has grown to expect things potentially blowing up at any moment. But it’s also terrifying to witness, and potentially crushing to be on the receiving end of. Two days ago, when he seemed to have an especially short fuse, Tilly found Ensign Magnus in a corner of the storage room, where they were curled up and crying after Stamets had scolded them for a mistake they’d made while initiating a jump test that nearly ripped apart the spore drive engine. She tried very hard not to imagine how she would be feeling in Magnus’ spot after that dressing down they had received from Stamets.

Now it’s her fifth day on the Discovery, she’s had another awful night because the issue with her special, anti-allergic bedsheets still hasn’t been resolved, and she not only stayed up late yesterday but also got into the lab early today to finish the work Stamets has demanded from her by this morning. So she’s tired, and — after winning the argument with the mess hall replicator in the morning about whether or not the amount of caffeine she’d ordered for breakfast was medically advisable — a little jittery.

Her hands are starting to shake, and the calculations for the simulation she’s been running for the last two hours just won’t add up, and she just can’t figure out what’s going wrong. Her eyes flicker nervously over to Lieutenant Stamets at his console who just got up and appears to be on his way over to her, and she starts panicking. She quickly fixes her eyes back on her screen in the hopes that he might be going somewhere else instead after all.

“Cadet, did you finish the simulation for the mycelium strand variation?” she hears him say right next to her a moment later, in the curt and slightly impatient tone he’s been employing all morning.

“I-I, uhm… I tried, sir — but, uhm, it’s — it’s not… I mean, I’m working on it…” She realizes that she’s rambling, but can’t seem to stop herself. She’s breaking into a cold sweat, her heart is racing, blood rushing in her ears. Her vision might have just gone blurry for a moment and she struggles to catch herself. “But I can’t — I mean, I… I’ll have to check some-something again in the — in the — I’ll just…” Her head starts spinning and she squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, but it doesn’t help much. Instead, they’re now stinging with tears. “Um, excuse me, sir…”

She’s not sure herself anymore what she’s doing, pushing past him and hurrying to the door that leads to the cultivation bay, avoiding the eyes of everyone in the room. Finally the security access system accepts her shaky breath print and lets her pass. She stumbles through the small anteroom into the garden, towards the control station for the cultivation bay, where she starts typing frantically to check the environmental conditions and settings.

A few moments into it she eventually realizes that her lips are trembling, as is the rest of her body, and she can no longer keep herself upright — this is terrible, she messed up and did everything wrong and she failed Stamets and then she ran away from him and she can’t even tell what she’s been punching into the console anymore and if she messed up any of the environmental settings in the bay while doing it — and this is already the worst week ever, she’ll get kicked off of the project for being such a massive disappointment to Stamets and his work and then her career in Starfleet will be over and — 

She becomes aware of the fact that she’s slumped down kneeling on the floor now, staring at her hands on the ground, and of the sobbing noises that are erupting from her own throat. Then the feeling of a touch on her shoulder startles her and she whips around.

It’s Lieutenant Stamets, who has crouched down beside her. The usual, persnickety expression has completely vanished from his face and instead his brows are drawn together and his mouth curved downward with genuine concern. She’s still staring at him, wide-eyed and terrified.

“Cadet Tilly?” His voice is gentle and calm. “What’s wrong?”

She tries to open her mouth and explain herself, but all that comes out is another sob. She watches in horror as his expression turns increasingly more worried while she tries a couple more times until she can finally form words. “I… I don’t know, sir, I-I’m so sorry…” She sniffles, vaguely aware of how red and blotchy and smudged with tears and snot her face must be looking right now, and she’s not even sure herself _why_ she seems to have completely lost all composure. “I s-screwed up the task you gave me, and I have no — no idea what I did wrong — I’ve been working on this for _hours_ and th-the simulation fails every time, no matter what I try to adjust. And you’re probably completely justified in being mad at me for holding up the project be-because I failed you, and I’m clearly unfit for this project, and I’m…”

“Cadet,” Stamets softly but firmly interrupts her. She blinks in surprise and stares at him. “Try to calm down. Look at me — take a deep breath in, deep breath out…” He demonstrates, and it feels a little silly but she imitates his inhales and exhales, and after a few seconds she can feel her nerves calming down, the panic slowly ebbing away as her heart rate starts to normalize and the trembling recedes. He watches her the entire time and eventually asks, “Better?”

Tilly nods. “Y-yes, kind of…”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“I… I don’t know… I just sort of — I don’t know, I completely panicked.” Quietly defeated, she adds, “This hasn’t happened in a long time.”

“This was because of the simulation I asked you to run?” Stamets says calmly.

“Yes…” Tilly glances at the console. “I-I couldn’t get it to work, no matter what I tried. So I thought in my panic that — that maybe checking the environmental controls in the cultivation bay could give me answers. But — b-by the time I got in here I was already… I’m not sure what I was doing. I can’t say what I did on there, if I messed anything up for real…”

“Okay,” Stamets says calmly. “I’ll go check, and if there’s anything wrong with the settings I can easily fix them. Will that ease your worries for the moment?” There’s no hint of judgment or annoyance in his tone or on his face.

Slowly, Tilly nods.

Stamets gets up from the floor and, after Tilly has shuffled aside, steps in front of the console. He taps at the screen for a few moments before he turns back to where she’s still crouching on the floor. “Everything’s fine, you didn’t actually change anything.” He comes back down to her eye level and puts a hand on her shoulder again, slowly enough that she could signal him at any time if the gesture was unwelcome. It is decidedly not. She tries to focus on the warmth of his hand on her shoulder, seeping through the fabric of her uniform, on the slight weight of it pressing into the spot, and it helps to ground her a little more. “You still don’t look well, Cadet. I’ll take you to sickbay.”

Tilly opens her mouth to protest that she’s fine, that he doesn’t need to invest his valuable time in this, and that if she was feeling unwell she could easily go to sickbay alone. But he cuts in before she can even start.

“You spent a lot of time in the lab over the last twenty-four hours. I’d like to make sure that there’s nothing serious to worry about before sending you home for the rest of the day.”

“But sir —”

“No ‘but’, Cadet. I’ll make this an order if I have to.”

He lets go of her shoulder and instead offers his hand. She takes it and lets him pull them both up from the floor to stand on their feet. Then she follows him out of the room and back into the spore drive lab, where he picks a PADD up from her workstation on the way out.

Once they step into sickbay, Stamets briefly scans the room and then heads directly towards Doctor Culber, who seems to be tidying up a biobed after recently dismissing a patient. Mildly surprised, she wonders if Stamets knows that Culber is her designated physician on the ship, but she just follows him silently.

Culber looks up at them with his usual, kind smile. “Lieutenant, Cadet, how can I help you?”

Without wasting so much as a friendly word, Stamets immediately gets to the point. “I’m bringing Cadet Tilly in for a check-up.”

“A check-up?” Culber repeats, surprised. “What happened?”

“I think she had a panic attack in the lab,” Stamets says quietly. He turns to her, his eyes searching hers for comment. She nods.

It’s interesting to watch Culber’s compassionate expression when he observes her for a moment turn into something much sterner as he turns to Stamets. “Was that your fault?”

Stamets’s brows furrow, and Tilly has to suppress a giggle because there’s something almost comical in the perfectly affronted reaction he displays. But right now probably isn’t the appropriate time to laugh. “No!? I mean…” His brows shift upwards as he looks at her again questioningly. “Was it?”

Tilly bites her lip and shakes her head. “No. You simply gave me that task and I… I tried my best to get it done, but I’ve been stressed out all week, a-and I haven’t been sleeping well or a lot, and I-I guess I got all worked up and obsessive about this, and I couldn’t solve it and sort of spiraled into a panic…” Out of the corner of her eye she can see the ends of Stamets’s eyebrows sink down in concern, almost compassion. Culber’s expression is serious, but he doesn’t look angry. He turns to Stamets.

“Lieutenant, can you give us some space?”

Stamets’s eyebrows flick up again. “Sure.” He walks over to a chair in the near corner of the room, where he sits down and starts tapping something into his PADD. She’s surprised that he stays and doesn’t head right back to his work, and a little touched — although the feeling is immediately clouded by guilt for taking up so much of his time.

“Sit down, Cadet,” Culber instructs her, pulling up a seat across from the biobed as she does. His voice is gentle. “How are you feeling about your first week here on the ship?”

“H-how do you mean…?” Tilly responds cautiously, afraid to give a wrong answer.

“Do you enjoy being here?”

“I… yes, of course, I’m — I’ve been working very hard to get this assignment. The ship is amazing and the people here are _so_ cool and the work is challenging, but it’s also fun…”

“But?” His expression is open, inviting her to talk.

“I don’t know… It’s also been a little overwhelming. My assignment here was very hectic, kind of last minute, and a few things got a little chaotic. I haven’t been able to sleep much, and…”

She lowers her head.

“Yes?” Culber’s question nudges her gently.

“I haven’t really managed to — to connect with anyone on the ship or to make any friends. I’m pretty sure I’m the youngest person aboard, and it’s been difficult to fit in.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Culber says, and it sounds nothing but genuine. “I know it’s been only a few days, and I’m sure you’ll be able to make those connections over time. In the meantime, you’re always welcome to join me at my table in the mess hall.” His lips curl into a smile.

Tilly isn’t quite sure if she’s meant to take this offer seriously; his expression at least doesn’t suggest otherwise, but the prospect of sitting with a senior officer, and one she barely knows and doesn’t interact with much otherwise at that, seems positively intimidating to her. Besides, she recalls seeing him share a table with Lieutenant Stamets once or twice, and _that_ would be really awkward if she had to sit and eat lunch with her boss. Still, he hit a sore spot with his offer: the fact that she so often sits awkwardly alone during her meal breaks.

“Thank you,” she finally responds quietly.

“And don’t hesitate to talk to me if you’re having any troubles.” He pauses for a moment. “I understand that you’re new and want to prove yourself, and always do your best. But part of doing your best is knowing your limits, and not disregarding them. That’s an essential skill for every Starfleet officer.”

“Even for a captain?” Tilly whispers.

Culber smiles. “Especially for a captain, because everyone depends on you knowing what you’re doing.” He seeks her eyes until she meets his, then places his hand on top of hers comfortingly, which she has curled into fists in her lap, her fingers digging into the fabric of her uniform trousers. His hand is warm, and she relaxes and unclenches her own. “You don’t have to do everything on your own. These are hard times, I know we’re in the middle of a war. But, Cadet Tilly, we’re all in this together. We look after each other. That’s Starfleet, remember?”

She nods, deeply moved by his words. Then she takes a deep breath. “Thank you, Doctor. I-I’ll try to keep it in mind.”

His smile widens. He squeezes her hand lightly before letting go. With an almost theatrical glance over his shoulder into the corner where Stamets has taken his seat, he continues. “So now tell me: What’s it like to work in Lieutenant Stamets’s lab?” There’s a twinkle in his eyes. “You can be honest. And if he’s being too hard on you, keep in mind that I outrank him.”

That startles a laugh out of her before she can catch herself. “No, it’s — it’s fine… I mean, yes, Dr. Sta… I mean, Lieutenant Stamets is very strict and all… But he challenges us all to do our best and — and not fool around or anything. He…” She bites her lip; her eyes flicker over into the corner for a moment now, too. “He’s really brilliant, and passionate about his work, and extremely professional. But sometimes that’s a little scary…” She can feel the blush that heats up her cheeks and possibly the entire rest of her face.

To her surprise, Culber’s expression softens. “He can be pretty blunt, but I’m sure he means no harm. Just remember, he’s only human too.” Her face must be remaining skeptical because he adds with a conspiratorial grin, “I am sure of that, I did his medical exam.”

This finally makes Tilly giggle.

More seriously, Culber continues. “I’m giving you the rest of the day off. Take some time for yourself. If you’re tired, sleep. Spend some time in one of the recreation rooms.” He glances at the chronometer in the corner of the nearest screen. “Doctor Pollard and I plan on having lunch in two and a half hours. You can join us if you like.”

She nods. “Thank you, Doctor.”

With a warm smile, he gives her hand another squeeze, then turns around and raises his voice enough for Stamets to hear him. “Lieutenant, we’re finished.”

Stamets looks up from his PADD and walks over to join them again.

“Cadet Tilly will be taking the day off to rest. You can have her back at work tomorrow, if she’s feeling fine by then.” Culber seeks her eyes for confirmation. She nods.

“Of course,” Stamets responds with no hint of objection or annoyance. He and Culber exchange a meaningful look that Tilly can’t fully decipher, but there’s something almost admonishing in Culber’s expression, and Stamets’s eyebrows draw together in a way that she’s never quite seen before. Almost imperceptibly, he nods.

“You’re both dismissed.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Stamets responds, more soft-spoken than Tilly has ever heard him talk to anyone from their medical team before.

“Thank you,” she chimes in once more before following Stamets out the door. When it closes behind them, he turns to her, holding up the PADD in his hand.

“Another word, Cadet, if I may.”

Tilly takes a deep breath to compose herself before she meets his eyes.

“I checked your calculations. They’re solid, you only made a small mistake with the ideal moisture level. If you fix the relative humidity value, it checks out and the simulation shouldn’t run into any more errors.”

“Of _course_!” Tilly slaps her flat palm over her face with a groan. “I’m so sorry, sir, I _always_ mix up whether it should be eighty-five or eighty-seven percent for ideal conditions. I should have…”

“It’s fine, Cadet,” Stamets reassures her, lifting his hand to gesture for her to calm down.

For a while, neither of them says anything, and the silence is starting to turn awkward. Tilly is about to open her mouth in a desperate attempt to break it when Stamets finally speaks again.

“I’m very sorry, Cadet.” She looks up in surprise. He seems nervous and a little flustered, like he’s not used to apologizing. Still everything about his apology seems completely genuine. “I’m afraid I tend to put too much pressure on the team. It’s because…” He halts, reconsiders. “No. I have no excuse.” He sighs. “I understand that I’m not exactly a shining example of self-care, but please don’t forget to look after yourself.” Tilly’s eyebrows raise in surprise as Stamets meets her eyes intently, repeating the same sentiment as Doctor Culber just did. “And don’t be afraid to talk to me if there’s a problem.”

Tilly coughs awkwardly, causing him to raise a confused eyebrow. “Um, thank you, sir. I, uh, admit that you are a little intimidating sometimes…”

“I am?”

_Gosh, the dance of his pale eyebrows can be fascinating to watch, almost to the point of distraction_ , Tilly thinks as they take on that upside-down V-shape again.

“Uh, well… kind of? Like when you tore into Ensign Magnus the other day… uh, that was a little terrifying to witness. And to receive even more.”

Stamets’s face falls. He looks so shocked that Tilly feels a little bad for telling him. Her cheeks are starting to heat up again, her nerves making her fidgety.

“I’ll…” Stamets says slowly. “I’ll speak to Ensign Magnus about that and apologize. Thank you for your honesty, Cadet.” A little awkwardly, he lifts his free hand and briefly squeezes her shoulder. There’s a shy smile on his lips. “I mean it.”

Then he takes a step back and squares his shoulders, putting his hands behind his back. It’s fascinating to see the familiar stern, distant Lieutenant Stamets return before her eyes.

“I’ll take your calculations for a few test runs today, and let you know the results if you wish.”

“Yes, thank you, sir.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow then, Cadet.”

They nod at each other and then he turns around and walks off, back to the lab. Tilly’s lips curl into a little smile as she watches him walk away, until he disappears around a corner, and then makes her way to her quarters. _Maybe there’s some truth about the saying that you shouldn’t meet your heroes. But in the case of Paul Stamets_ , she thinks, _there’s much more to discover than the first impression might lead you to believe._


End file.
